Pamela Harris, who won a special election last November for the New York State Assembly seat in the 46th district, tells Paula Katinas of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle that she had not intended to run but now, having already sponsored and co-sponsored bills on everything from illegal home conversions to recording police interrogations of young people, she has decided she will run for her first full term this coming November.

Looking out for young people and offering them a better chance has been something that has preoccupied Harris for some time. About a decade ago, troubled by the behavior of some young people in her neighborhood, she began a group call Coney Island Generation Gap. It started with a camera that she gave an 8 year old boy, instructing him to go out and take photographs, and evolved into a local organization that had more than 70 kids in its program, helping with educational opportunities, and telling them about the prospects for college. Harris lives on Coney Island, and her assembly district includes Coney Island, Seagate and parts of Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights.

Harris attended John Jay College of Criminal Justice while working as a correction officer on Rikers Island, received her BA from St. Joseph’s and a masters from Capella University. She said her experience at Rikers, and later, delivering food by truck to various city jails, made her want to do something to help kids avoid that fate.

Read Brooklyn Daily Eagle‘s interview with Harris to find out what she took as a message that convinced her to run in the special election, and find out what made Harris retire from working at Rikers a decade ago.

As the White House urged Congress to withhold $600 million in nutrition assistance to Puerto Rico, officials responded angrily that this is only the latest in a series of President Trump’s attempts to stop the flow of federal aid to the island, El Nuevo Día reports. Political analyst Domingo Emanuelli found the Trump government's actions “barbaric,” and urged Puerto Rican Republicans to reconsider their allegiance. San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz said: “I shouted against Trump’s abuses from the start while others were chummy with him. Trump is not the plantation owner and we are not his slaves.” Link to original story →

The Indigenous Peoples March being held in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 18, a day ahead of the Women's March, will bring together groups from Puerto Rico to South America and Central America, reports Remezcla, to focus attention on issues from voter suppression to human trafficking to police brutality to what is called an “environmental holocaust” by activists. “I think it’s a collective cry for help because we’re in a time of crisis that we have not seen in a very long time,” says Nathalie Farfan, an Ecuadorean Indigenous woman and event organizer. Link to original story →

After vowing to create a more inclusive school system in North Carolina, the Durham Board of Education introduced a new department of second language services to serve newly-arrived immigrants who don’t speak English as a first language, Qué Pasa Noticias reports. One of the main goals of the initiative will be to coordinate a translation and interpretation system to help families participate in their children’s education. “As our Latinx population keeps growing we keep opening our schools’ doors to those arriving from all over the world,” said Superintendent Pascal Mubenga. Link to original story →

With Sen. Kamala Harris expected to announce her decision on a presidential run, The American Bazaar asks members of the Indian-American community about the potential candidacy of the California native. While some celebrated the possibility of Harris, who is of Jamaican-Indian descent, running amid the current political atmosphere, others say the country is "still not ready for a female president and certainly not a non-white." Link to original story →